Category Archives: Non-fiction (memoir/ghostwritten)

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YE QUAINT Olde inn was near Winchester. The first night we couldn’t sleep for the late summer heat and the back and forth blaze of sirens along the nearest stretch of road. By the time the three or four police cars had converged just below our window and the guy got slammed over the boot of his car, we were up and about, peeking from behind the bedroom curtains like naughty children who couldn’t or just wouldn’t go to sleep.

* * *

LATER, on the road out of Stonehenge, I noticed something peculiar in the rear view mirror.

“Eh … don’t want to alarm you, but why is there a black helicopter following us?”

“Well,” he replied coolly, “if you look out my rear window, there’s actually five of them.”

And true enough, there was. All unmarked and menacing, flying low in a criss-cross pattern. The farthest must have been about half a mile back. I didn’t think they looked like police or conventional military – logic dictated that they were triangulating for mapping purposes. Nonetheless they did seem to stick to our backs. And they were very very low.

“Is there a base near here or something?” I asked.

“Och,” he replied, “loads of them. The place is riddled. Could be anybody.”

Just as he finished uttering the words, two of the choppers got into line behind the vehicle. One dropped to what looked like about twenty feet off the ground. If my loved one was at all rattled, he hid it very well.

“What is this, a f***ing James Bond movie?” For the next twenty minutes or so, I would have been forgiven for thinking that it was.

After a while, it got tiresome. “This is getting stupid now. They must be bored by now.”

* * *

LATER still, we passed by Winchester Train Station. Shifty looking blokes in bowler hats tried to disguise themselves with newspapers.

“God,” I whispered, “it’s like a timewarp to the Sixties. I thought you were joking about all this New Avengers Stuff.”

“Told you,” he said. “It’s a different world down here, you know.”

Jeez, this entire trip felt as unreal as the one to Washington State two years earlier, when only hours after watching Enemy of the State inflight, my camping trip in a black pickup with a survival expert with OCD and a Ninja Rottweiler became a pastiche of practically every movie I had ever seen. Only then the police were following us, just for sticking out like a sore thumb.

IT BEGAN with a kiss. Not a passionate embrace but a soft brush on the cheek.

The feeling of warmth and love from an old friend lingered on beyond the dream and well into the following days …

Like a little seed, the feeling grew and grew until I longed to be with my old friend. All the while, I thought to myself how sublime that Cupid should strike without even so much as the presence of one who I hadn’t heard from in years …

The phone call came three weeks later. He came round for a few beers and we shared stories. He’d sent me a distress flare of sorts three weeks earlier, he said. Yes, I definitely got the message, I said. And then the rest was history.

MANY full moons ago, in Ninety-eight or thereabouts, I stumbled on a late-night episode of Dark Skies. In those days, The X-Files was more my thing – Dark Skies was just a little too dark for my liking.I was just about to flip the channel yet again when I realised that the main female character was in the process of reliving an alien abduction – that’s the one where Kim undergoes hypnotic regression, only for this gi-normous Hive implant inside her head to cause her nose to bleed. I don’t recall whether or not I watched the rest of the episode. And I certainly haven’t the stomach to wade through an entire season online only to discover that the implant was in fact quite minescule …

Some time in the wee small hours, I had a dream. I remember nothing other than that I took some kind of road trip in which I missed chunks of time. And waking up on a riverbank full of faerie folk. Then I woke up for real.

Once I had given up trying to remember any other details, I finally managed to drag myself out of bed. I had a work meeting that day, so in order to look the part, I spent longer than usual straddled across the toilet seat applying my make up (my bathroom was tiny and the best light could only be achieved by perching the mirror on the window ledge behind the cistern).

Imagine then my horror and disbelief when just as I am putting the finishing touches to my lips, a gob of fresh crimson appears as if out of nowhere and splashes onto the groove beneath my nose then onto the cistern.

“Holy shit.” The force of the recoil from my reflection in the mirror causes me to catch my foot on the floor mat and narrowly avoid glancing my lower back off the side of the bath.

Needless to say, I have since been exceedingly picky in my night-time viewing habits. As for horror movies, never EVER again. Noo siree …

MILLENNIUM Fever was in full swing and it seemed that every man and his dog expected a cataclysm of one description or another by the time the year was out. And just to make sure that even the most logical-minded got sucked in, there was Y2K. Although steering clear of prophecies or New World Order bullshit, I had got wind of a great almighty asteroid heading straight for us. On the 29th of August 1999 to be precise.

I was quite frankly at that point where I had had the world up to my chin. I didn’t want to be in it. Not as it was. All around me what had the cheek to call itself a civilisation was ready to implode, just like all the others before it. If not now, then at some point in the not too distant future. And I almost wished it would. Get it over and done with and all that so that whoever was left could start over.

Being the over-thinker that I was, I prepared myself mentally. Assuming, of course, that I even survived it. And being the self-analyst that I was, I called this my Sarah Connor complex. Syndrome would have been more accurate but complex sounded so much better.

29 August 1999

INSPIRED ages ago by my utter lack of preparedness for life in the wilderness, I had bought Lofty Wiseman’s SAS Survival Guide and built up my ready-for-anything tobacco tin and small ready-for-anything rucksack. I had the tools, Armageddon or no Armageddon. And at least if nothing happened, I wouldn’t make a complete tit of myself.

It was a clear starry evening when a friend and I enjoyed a warm goblet of wine in front of a hot fire. With no intention of bracing myself, I had accepted her invitation to stay over and chat into the wee small hours. She had no idea of the impending asteroid strike and I didn’t discuss it. After all, without proof I didn’t want to scare the shit out of anyone. I felt no anxiety as such, just a sense that whatever was thrown at me, I would deal with it. Bring it on.

In the meantime, maybe I could anaesthetise myself a little … just not too much …

Night came and went. The next time I opened my eyes, I felt a mixture of relief and disappointment.

TO THE strains of Dire Straits, I am surrounded by battle in its last throes, a sea of mud everywhere. These fields of destruction, baptisms of fire, I’ve witnessed your suffering, every man has to die …

But not just yet. A trapped horseman is pulled from between his fallen mount and the mire. Am I the one being pulled or the one doing the pulling? I can’t tell which of us is which.

I do not know where I am or who I am other than that I am a man. And I know not how I know but the other man is Rab …

* * * * *

BOTH RAB and I fluttered in the same social circle. For me anyway, the sense of having met before was instantaneous.

It was while walking along a busy street only days after our introduction that I was hit with the cinematic picture of horses flopping about in the mud and an intense feeling of loyalty, brother to brother. I had never had a ‘vision’ with audio before.

Somewhere between a week and two weeks later, I meandered through Leith Links, on my way to the house of the mutual friend who had introduced us. Having never taken that particular route before, I scanned the open green and surrounding buildings. As I did so, got a strong impression of mud where there should have been grass.

The answer to my immediate question came quickly and without the asking. It was my friend who told me that here in the middle of the 16th century, the French had occupied Leith, until they were forcibly removed by the English army in 1560. Like most Scots, I had never heard of the Battle of Leith Links, or rather the Siege of Leith.

A short time later, Rab and I found ourselves blethering – as we were prone to do – like there was no tomorrow. Only this time our conversation took a more spooky turn than usual. Ghosts, dreams, you name it. The situation was ripe for bringing my battle vision into the conversation.

Thing is, Rab beat me to it …

“I’ve been having this recurring dream,” he said. “Well, actually, it’s more like a vision coz I only get it when I’m awake during the day.”

I know what he is going to say. Baited breath.

“I’m in a battle and I’m being pulled out from under a horse.”

I felt my face turn to rubber. It must have blanched, for he said “Not you as well.”

THE HOMELESS day centres were either closed or their books were full – my options had run out hours ago. Now it was raining again and I was pissing wet through. The hunger was excruciating.

Rock bottom could not be any lower than this. Too weak to venture any further, I located the nearest available park bench and lay down my weary head, seduced by the very notion of drifting into a deep slumber from which I could never return.

Just as my eyes were half shut, a blur appeared out of nowhere. A tiny bird. Perching itself on the back of the seat, its demeanour was curious, expectant.

“Cheep.”

Sitting up, I replied “Sorry pal. Nothing today.”

“Cheep.” It strutted about then flew off.

Moments later, it landed beside me, this time with a morsel of bread in its beak. Insisting on full eye contact, it dipped its gaze only to deposit it. Then it eyeballed me again, as if just to make sure I knew what to do.

Not knowing whether to laugh or cry, I pretended to put the bread in my mouth then snuck it into my coat pocket.

“Mmmm. Yummy.”

Then my wee benefactor was gone.

Infused with just enough hope to drag myself onto my feet, my day just went from bad to better.

I DWELL in the company of witches, none of whom I recognise. All robed in black and taking part in rituals, we are controlled by a matriarchal figure we cannot see but who we know is there. I want out but leaving is not an option. When I do something that is against Her, I am mind-controlled into doing her bidding. I am aware of yet another presence that I cannot identify …

After a time, we find ourselves in a massive black tent, anxious to find out of we are free of Her. We look skyward only to see long blade-like nails tear through the tent lining. She is coming for us. I fight to maintain my free will yet again but it is even harder than before. When She finally shows herself, she too is dressed entirely in black with a head-dress resembling that of the White Witch of Narnia. Tiny barbed objects shoot at my fingers, embedding themselves into the very tips. Even as I try to will them out from under my flesh, they expand, so that when they break the surface, it is worse than if I had left them alone. Giving in would be so much easier; the more I fight Her, the greater the pain …

Fast forward and I stand at a hospital reception desk. A man, whose presence I recognise from the witches’ coven, comes in asking for someone. I look at him blankly until, without me needing to say anything, he realises that he is himself the man he is looking for. Then, just before we get the opportunity to combine our efforts, both he and I are dragged away by orderlies …